Meet at Strangers’ Gate (east side of Central Park West at 106th Street). To make sure we start on time, tickets must be purchased in advance by calling or emailing us (212-496-1714; landmarkwest@landmarkwest.org) and sending your check for $25 to LANDMARK WEST!,

45 West 67th Street, New York, NY10023. Space is limited.

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The Upper West Side is literally filled with vernacular architecture, referring to buildings and streetscapes that, while they may not have been designed by New York’s most prestigious architects for elite clients, reflect our city’s social, cultural and historical evolution in compelling ways. Starting at the former New YorkCancerHospital (Charles C. Haight, 1884-86), a prime example of high-style architecture, Andrew Scott Dolkart will lead us on a tour of remarkable buildings by lesser-known but talented architects who worked primarily for speculative developers.

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Together, these builders – often recent immigrants – adapted popular architectural forms to the demands of a dense city. Their deep influence on New York’s streetscapes is visible among the eclectic, Queen-Anne-style rowhouses of Manhattan Avenue (recently designated as a historic district by the Landmarks Preservation Commission), the tenements and “French Flats” along Columbus and Amsterdam Avenues, the Broadway commercial corridor, the pre-war apartment buildings of West End Avenue and Riverside Drive, and brownstone side streets. Our park-to-park walk will reveal a cross-section of New York City housing types. We will wind up at StrausPark (106th Street) in time to enjoy one of the hundreds of free concerts taking place in public spaces throughout the city as part of the landmark music festival,

“Make Music New York.”

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Andrew Scott Dolkart is an architectural historian, writer, the James Marston Fitch Associate Professor of Historic Preservation at ColumbiaUniversity and a founding Board member of LW!. His book, MorningsideHeights: A History of Its Architecture and Development, won the American Association of Publishers Scholarly Book Award for best book in Architecture and Urban Design in 1998.

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LANDMARK WEST! is a non-profit award-winning community group working since 1985 to preserve the best of the Upper West Side’s architectural heritage from 59th to 110th Street between Central Park West and Riverside Drive. Owing in large part to our advocacy, there are nearly 2,700 designated landmarks in this area (up from only 337 in 1985).

**Come join in a chorus of the CECPP preservation anthem (visit YouTube for a preview)!**

Door prize for a lucky preservationist!

The Citizens Emergency Committee to Preserve Preservation (CECPP) will discuss current efforts

to make sure New York City has a landmarks preservation system that works!

The challenge is to get the Landmarks Preservation Commission increased funding, operational transparency and political independence to do its job better so that beloved buildings and neighborhoods all over the City can be preserved.

What This Means:

*More staff to designate more landmarks and historic districts and to safeguard them against inappropriate changes*

*Fair and balanced consideration of community input*

*Making sure Landmarks Commissioners are qualified and free from political influence*

**Come join in a chorus of the CECPP preservation anthem (visit YouTube for a preview)!**

Door prize for a lucky preservationist!

The Citizens Emergency Committee to Preserve Preservation (CECPP) will discuss current efforts

to make sure New York City has a landmarks preservation system that works!

The challenge is to get the Landmarks Preservation Commission increased funding, operational transparency and political independence to do its job better so that beloved buildings and neighborhoods all over the City can be preserved.

What This Means:

*More staff to designate more landmarks and historic districts and to safeguard them against inappropriate changes*

*Fair and balanced consideration of community input*

*Making sure Landmarks Commissioners are qualified and free from political influence*

Friday, May 4, 2007

Surrender the image of a preservationist as a crabby, older person with a park view to protect.

Preservationist Seri Worden, 30, grew up in Brandon, Fla., shopping at big-box stores such as Target and eating at strip mall chains like Bennigan's. Now, as the executive director of the Friends of the Upper East Side Historic Districts, she is fighting to save the Upper East Side's low- and mid-rise landscape, and to extend the neighborhood's landmark districts.

Ms. Worden is part of a cadre of under-40 professionals who came of age during a time of tremendous suburban sprawl, but grew up to lead some of this city's most high-profile preservation groups. These vocal "new preservationists" have positioned themselves at the center of many of the city's recent battles over building proposals, including those at 980 Madison Ave., the New York Historical Society on Central Park West, and the campus of the General Theological Seminary in Chelsea.

These new preservationists are regulars at community board and Landmarks Preservation Commission meetings. There, they can often be found touting the architectural merits of a structure built a generation before they were born, or opposing a glassy residential high-rise in a landmark district — cases some developers and change advocates have called obstructionist.

"If they're not reasonable, they can hold back certain developments and certain changes that are necessary to adjust to the 21st century," the developer who hopes to build atop an Upper East Side gallery at 980 Madison Ave., Aby Rosen, said.

All but one member of the Landmarks Preservation Commission in January said they would not support Mr. Rosen's proposal to erect a 22-story cylindrical glass tower above 980 Madison Ave., and sent the developer back to the drawing board.

Some of the new preservationists, such as Ms. Worden, say they were drawn to the field, in part, because of their aversion to the sprawling quality of their hometowns. "When I go home to Florida, you have the same strip-mall every two miles," Ms. Worden said. "There doesn't seem like there's a chance for an individual store or restaurant that isn't a chain to exist. Every time I go anywhere like that, I'm so happy I do what I do."

Others grew up in and around New York, and have been inspired by the extent of change to New York's cityscape over the decades, and the rapidity of that change — particularly amid the development boom that has given rise to a slew of luxury condominium towers.

The executive director of Landmarks West, Kate Wood, 33, said she learned the value of preservation from her parents, who were constantly working to maintain their early 20th century home in Princeton, N.J. "For me, it just seemed normal — you live in a place and you take care of it," she said.

Ms. Wood been a vocal opponent of the New York Historical Society's exterior renovation plan — approved last week by the landmarks commission. Ms. Wood repeatedly called the renovation a guise for a residential high-rise project that she said would mar Central Park West's historic skyline. Her organization was at the center of a battle to preserve the Edward Durrell Stone building at 2 Columbus Circle — but failed after a long and loud campaign that lured in the likes of author Tom Wolfe.

There are also practical reasons why so many young people are leading the city's professional preservation pack: 60-plus hour weeks and mid-five-figure salaries that infrequently exceed $50,000, Internal Revenue Service filings show. "Every day, it's a David versus Goliath battle," the executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, Andrew Berman, said. "You really have to have fire in your belly to be willing to take on that position."

Still, the availability of jobs in preservation, even relatively low-paying ones, is emblematic of how the field of preservation — long the domain of tireless volunteers such as Christabel Gough and Whitney North Seymour Jr. — has been professionalized, and formalized. Since Columbia University first started its graduate historic preservation program 42 years ago, many other institutions of higher education have followed suit.

Younger preservationists have "grown up in a world where preservation is legitimized through legal statues and ordinances," the administrative director of Columbia's urban planning and historic preservation programs, Janet Foster, said.

Ms. Foster said many of the new preservationists are concerned not only with preserving the city's 19th- and early 20th-century architecture, but also with "keeping representation from all periods in history, because if you weren't born until 1970, 1969 is ancient history."

Case in point is the white brick 1950 apartment house that the Friends of the Upper East Side Historic District favors designating as a landmark.

The new preservationists, and those who support their work, see their job as protecting the historic architecture that makes New York distinctive and charming. For that reason, the Brooklyn-bred director of the Historic Districts Council, Simeon Bankoff, 36, calls himself and his fellow preservationists "professional New Yorkers."

"I do think my generation has a great appreciation for the kinds of quirky buildings and beautiful buildings that make New York unique," a fellow with the Municipal Arts Society of New York City, Lisa Kersavage, 37, said. "I live in Carroll Gardens, and I see all these young people starting trendy restaurants and bars there — and they are almost universally respectful of the buildings they move into."

Given the perceived generational interest, some preservation groups are making an effort to attract young, committed volunteers. Last week, the Waterfront Preservation Alliance of Greenpoint and Williamsburg brought together about 100 mostly young adults for a benefit at a Brooklyn bar. "I don't think having an appreciation for history knows an age boundary," a 30-year-old alliance volunteer, Alice Rich, said.

Tuesday, May 1, 2007

LANDMARK WEST! is working with a coalition of over 30 groups (please see list below) to co-sponsor the First Annual NYC Preservation Lobby Day on Wednesday, May 9, 2007. A press conference will take place on the steps of City Hall at 12:00 noon. Please join us!

Together in a unified voice, we are urging the City Council to increase the budget of the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) by $1 million (from its current, miniscule level of only $4.3 million). Why? Please see the attached Fact Sheet and bullet points below (prepared by the Citizens Emergency Committee to Preserve Preservation).

The City Council and Mayor Bloomberg need to hear from preservationists! Please show your support for helping the LPC get the resources it needs to do its job of protecting the historic places that matter most to New Yorkers by taking the following actions:

1) Call your council member (or one of their staff member). (Find contact information at www.nyccouncil.info.) Let them know that you, as one of their constituents, support additional funding for the LPC.

2) Schedule an appointment to meet with your council member. If possible, set up a time between 9:00 AM and 12:00 noon on Wednesday, May 9. Bring colleagues and neighbors with you - in unity, there's strength! For purposes of coordination, let us know if you get an appointment by emailing landmarkwest@landmarkwest.org.

3) Invite your council member to join us at the press conference. May 9, 12:00 noon, on the steps of City Hall.

4) Send an email or fax stating your support for additional funding, especially if you aren't able to schedule an appointment to see your council member (please cc. landmarkwest@landmarkwest.org).

The Landmarks Preservation Commission is one of the smallest city agencies in New York, yet its workload is impressively large and growing every day. Their staff and budget have become dangerously small:

The Commission’s budget has shrunk by 35% since 1990, in constant dollars

The Commission’s staff has decreased by 25% since 1990. Over this same time period, the number of applications to repair or modify landmarks (which the Commission regulates) has more than doubled, to 9,000 per year;

The Commission has just 52 staff members who watch over more than 22,000 landmarks throughout the five boroughs; only 3 of which are charged with enforcing the landmarks law

The Commission’s share of the city budget has shrunk by 52% since 1990. It now occupies just .007% of the entire city budget

Since 1990, the Commission has increased the revenue it generates for the city from just $10,000 per year to more than $1 million per year. It now raises nearly 1/3 of its agency budget, yet the city continues to deny the Commission the funding and staff it needs

Organizations In Support of Increasing the LPC Budget By $1 Million

American Institute of Architects, NYC ChapterBoerum Hill AssociationBrooklyn Community Board # 2Brooklyn Community Board # 6BrooklynHeights AssociationCitizens Emergency Committee to Preserve PreservationCobble Hill AssociationDefenders of the Historic Upper East SideDUMBO Neighborhood AssociationThe Drive to Protect the Ladies' Mile DistrictEastVillage Community CoalitionFortGreene AssociationFour Borough Neighborhood Preservation AllianceFriends of the Upper East Side Historic DistrictsFulton Ferry Landing AssociationHistoric Districts CouncilThe Historic Neighborhood Enhancement AllianceGreenwich Village Society for Historic PreservationLandmark West!Lower East SideTenementMuseumMunicipal Art SocietyNew York Landmarks ConservancyPark Slope Civic CouncilPreservation League of Staten IslandQueens Civic CongressQueens Preservation CouncilSociety for the Architecture of the CityWomen's City Club of New YorkList in formation